What all this indicates is that the global Jihadist movement is getting stronger and spreading its violent attacks to more areas of the world, giving them more training areas, launching pads and recruiting fodder with which to wage war against America and the West.

There was good news and bad news on the front against Jihad in Africa this Christmas.

The good news was that there were no reported attacks on Christians in Nigeria by Boko Haram, something that has happened in the past few years on Christmas Day, as well as just about every other significant day on the Christian religious calendar.

The bad news is that there were attacks on churches in Kenya. These attacks seem to have been on the order of mob violence, rather than organized terrorist attacks, but they were still an act of Jihad.

More bad news: the Reuters news agency, whose parent company has extensive ties to Shariah-compliant finance, filed a terribly researched and misleading report on these attacks which can be found on India’s First Post news site.

It is no mere coincidence that Jihad has erupted across the African continent in recent years. We have seen active Jihadi violence in Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Ghana, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, South Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and the Central African Republic. If you subscribe to the so-called “mainstream” media for an explanation for this phenomenon, you’d believe that it was caused by “sectarian tensions,” poverty, or general lawlessness.

These explanations are balderdash. Africans of various ethnicities, faiths, tribal origins and nationalities have lived in close proximity to each other for centuries. Unlike past violence, the recent wave of Jihadi violence has two common threads: Islam and Jihad. Past violence may have been due to local differences, but Boko Haram operating in Nigeria and Cameroon, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb operating in Mali and Niger, and Al Shabaab operating in Somalia and Kenya all have the same doctrinal basis for their violent campaigns: Islam.

We can deny it all we want, but it doesn’t make it untrue.

With regard to the Christmas Day attacks in Kenya, “youths,” (codespeak in mainstream media like Reuters for young Jihadis) threw Molotov cocktails at Christian churches:

Youths threw petrol bombs at two Kenyan churches on Christmas day, police said on Thursday, in the latest bout of violence against Christians on the country’s predominantly Muslim coast. Police and witnesses said the churches on the edge of port city of Mombasa were attacked in the early hours of December 25 after churchgoers held services to usher in Christmas. Police had no suspects but were exploring the possibility that the attacks may have been launched by Muslim militants…

Now, here’s a significant clue as to the actual origin of this violence:

Police said Muslim youths believed to be controlled by radical preachers with links to Somali militant group al Shabaab might be behind the attacks, which left one church completely destroyed.

For years we have been hearing over and over again that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, yet for years and years we see reports of Muslim Imams and clerics admonishing Muslims to commit violence. We have seen it around the world: from Anwar al-Awlaki in San Diego, Denver and Northern Virginia; from the Blind Sheikh in Egypt and then Brooklyn, New York; from Anjem Choudary in the UK; from Sheikh Yussef al Qaradawi in Egypt and Qatar; from Hezbollah cleric Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon; from Mufti Taqi Usmani in Pakistan; from a host of Saudi clerics and, last but certainly not least, from the Ayatollahs who rule the Islamic Republic of Iran.

How do you suppose that ideological supporters of Al Shabaab came to be clerics in mosques in Kenya? It doesn’t just happen by osmosis. It happens through dawa operations (missionary work) funded by petrowealth in nations such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Mosques have to be built and funded. Clerics and Imams have to be paid. The money doesn’t grow on trees in the African bush.

Now we get to the typical Reuters apologetics for Islamic jihad–the part where Reuters blames the Christian victims of Jihadi violence for being attacked:

Many Muslims on the Indian Ocean coastline feel marginalised by Kenya’s predominantly Christian government and the historically cordial relations between the two communities have suffered strains in recent years.

“The churches are located in an area mainly inhabited by Muslims, and church members had reported threats before from some youth who told them to close the churches down,” said Robert Mureithi, the Likoni area police chief.

Clearly this is Reuters’ pathetic attempt at “balance.” The inference here is that the churches were attacked because the Muslim community has been mistreated in some way by the Kenyan government. Oh, and the churches were in a predominantly Muslim area, and we all know that having a Christian church in a predominantly Muslim area is “provocative.” One wonders whether these churches will be rebuilt, or will the congregations decide to worship elsewhere? Because that is exactly what the Jihadists want. They want to impose Shariah, first locally, then nationally, then regionally and eventually globally.

Under Shariah, it is forbidden to make repairs or improvements to Christian churches. The Jihadis will see to it that Shariah is enforced one way or another. We should not at all be surprised if the churches are not rebuilt, if attacks on churches continue and if eventually churches and Christians disappear from these areas altogether.

Today it is the coast of Kenya, the nation that saw the horrific Jihadi attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi not terribly long ago. But it most certainly will not end in Kenya.

Despite the fact that Al Qaeda is conducting active operations around the world, including recent operations in which Americans were killed in Libya and Algeria, President Obama continues to spread the myth that Al Qaeda is defeated.

He has, however, changed his tune a little bit.

Ever since the killing of Osama Bin Laden, Obama has been declaring that Al Qaeda has been defeated or is “on the run.”

Now he qualifies his statement: he now says that the “core” of Al Qaeda is “on the path to defeat,” what ever that means.

Actually, it means nothing. It is meaningless political babble.

Judging from the article linked below, Obama seems to think that if the US withdraws from combat with the Jihadists, the war will be over. This attitude isn’t just naive, it’s downright dishonest and dangerously irresponsible…

They are holding 41, or possibly even more, hostages in southern Algeria. Included in that number are 7 Americans.

Here is an image that is very worrisome. Al Qaeda seldom takes hostages with the intent of making some kind of bargain. They usually do horrible, gruesome things to hostages and record and distribute it via the internet and Al Jazeera…

Pray for these poor people

President Obama had little or nothing to say about this latest Islamic Jihadist terrorist attack. He was busy using people as props in his own way…

Obama sells F-16s and M-1 tanks to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, but he wants to ban AR-15s in the US…

Once again we have proof that fighting Jihad as a criminal justice issue simply does not work. There are two reasons for this:

1. Jihad is not crime, Jihad means to war against non-Muslims and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion. We treat Jihadists like criminals. They wage war against us.

2. There are some in our criminal justice system who don’t even take the “crime” of Jihad seriously.

Case in point: Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus.

Obus just sentenced Ahmed Ferhani to just 10 years for plotting to blow up synagogues in the New York area.

This was the outcome of a plea deal negotiated by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. Ironically, Cyrus Vance, Jr. is the son of Cyrus Vance, who was Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter and resigned in protest when Carter authorized the mission to attempt to free American hostages held in Tehran, Iran back in 1980.

Vance, Jr. is a little bit better than Judge Obus; he at least asked for a 14-year sentence. Obus handed down the 10-year sentence with the comment that Ferhani would almost certainly be deported upon release. This is bad policy. Ferhani could have been sentenced to 32 years in prison. Sentencing him to less than a third of that is a disservice to the entire country. Passing down a light sentence based on the expectation that our bureaucratized counterterrorism apparatus is going to take care of matters in the end is a recipe for failure.

Committed Jihadists are not good candidates for rehabilitation. Just look at the recidivism rates of former Gitmo prisoners: Upwards of 20% rejoin violent Jihad.

Laws involving terrorism need to be strengthened. Jihadis need to be locked away for good. Is there a viable argument against life sentences for plotting to commit terrorist attacks that could result in the deaths of scores of innocent lives?

Nigeria, ECOWAS nations plot against Al-Qaeda• As Al-Qaeda spreads across West Africa

As Al-Qaeda’s first cell was dismantled last week in Kano city, Nigeria and other West African nations are now plotting to tame the sect as its presence in other West African nations is recurring in security reports on regular basis.

Investigations by Sunday Tribune showed that West African leaders are now coordinating with their colleagues from the Sahel region on how to combat the spread of Al-Qaeda from the Maghreb to the West African states, especially after the discovery of an alleged collaboration among drug traffickers, kidnappers and some elements of the jihadists movement.

Findings within Nigeria revealed that the arrest of a Mauritanian and four other alleged suspects linked to Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb has removed doubts within intelligence communities about the sect‘s presence in Nigeria independent of the Boko Haram group.

While Southern tip of West Africa has not recorded direct Al-Qaeda attacks, recent reports indicated that jihadists have been infiltrating the West African sub region as early as 2007 when three Mauritanian terrorists who killed a French tourist family fled to Senegal.

In 2009, Ghana authorities were reported to have arrested three al-Qaeda suspects on drug trafficking charges, marking the first time that terrorists were themselves tied to drug operations.

Niger, in 2010, was also reported to have extradited Salafist Taqqi Ould Youssef to Mauritania with Niger’s security agencies believing that Youssef was appointed by Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb [AQIM] to create a cell targeting Western nationals in Northern Niger.

Military and intelligence leaders in the Sahel are reported to be working on a security plan that is way beyond the Joint Military and Intelligence Command involving Mauritanian, Mali, Niger and Algeria which they believe has not totally contained the threats from the sect.

According to a leaked security plan by a Maghreb news organisation, Magharebia, the Sahel countries have a new strategic vision to fight back with a security cordon based on concentric rings that begin in the Maghreb and stretch far afield to West and Central Africa.

Quoting a leaked plan, the news organ reported that Mauritania is going to work on co-coordinating Sahel power with African states on two axes: the field states and those behind them.

The states involved are divided into two with the states on the front lines – Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – expected to work with those further away such as Morocco, Libya and Nigeria.

Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger are listed as existing partners for the Joint Military Staff Committee of the Sahel Region, while Morocco, Libya and Nigeria are reported to have been invited to attend the security sessions.

In an editorial column published on 18 December, the editors of The Toledo Blade point out that capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden would not defeat Al Qaeda and capturing or killing Mullah Omar would not defeat the Taliban.

The fact of the matter is, Al Qaeda and the Taliban could cease to exist tomorrow and the U.S. and Western civilization would still face a Jihadist threat. This overall war–which we at TTB believe should be properly called World War IV–goes way beyond Al Qaeda.

Already, there are spin-offs of Al Qaeda in the Asia-Pacific Region, Southwest Asia, North Africa, Europe and the U.S. These are loosely formed groups which are inspired by Al Qaeda and model themselves in some way off of Al Qaeda, but are not operationally attached to Al Qaeda in the classic sense. Bin Laden and Zawahiri don’t command them and those two Jihadi leaders could be vaporized by a JDAM tomorrow and the global offshoots would still exist.

(Incidentally, we believe that Osama Bin Laden is dead and has been for some time. More on that in a future posting.)

The Jihad extends beyond Al Qaeda as well. When the Jihadist terrorists attacked Mumbai in November of 2008, it was automatically assumed that they were Al Qaeda. When it was surmised that they were in fact Lashkar-e-Taiba, that organization was labeled as an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Now, it turns out that, while both Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba are both Salafist Jihadist terrorist organizations and ideological allies, they are separate groups. One could be wiped off the face of the earth this afternoon and the other would still be waging Jihad.

Then there is the whole issue of Jihadist groups who are certainly NOT part of Al Qaeda. Hezbollah is the prime example of this. Hezbollah is Shia and, while they have cooperated with Al Qaeda in the past, they are definitely not part of Al Qaeda. Moreover, Hezbollah is perhaps even more dangerous than Al Qaeda due to their backing from Iran and a robust infrastructure set up on every continent, with the possible exception of Antarctica.

The fact that some of these groups are not actively engaged in ongoing operations against the U.S. or the West on a day-to-day basis should not be construed to mean that they are somehow not waging Jihad against us.

On one of the laptop computers uncovered in the investigation of Lashkar-e-Taiba after the Mumbai attacks, it was discovered that the group had a global list of 320 possible targets for attack. And the recon man for the Mumbai attacks turns out to have been a guy from Chicago.

It has been falsely and widely stated that Hezbollah has not been engaged in operations against the U.S. since the late 1980s. They have. Not only did Hezbollah help Al Qaeda set up the two East Africa embassy bombings in 1998, but Hezbollah was extremely active in the Iraq insurgency. Senior Hezbollah operatives were captured by U.S. forces in Iraq in the past few years and Hezbollah fighters were killed by U.S. G.I.s right along with members of Al Sadr’s “Mahdi Army” in Iraq:

America is, unfortunately, largely in denial about the war we are in and that makes victory all the more elusive. Too many believe that “killing Bin Laden” will end it or that wiping out Al Qaeda will mean victory. This is simply untrue.

There is a global Jihad being waged against America and its allies. It is being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq to be sure. But it is also being waged in Israel, Algeria, Somalia, Sudan, Western Europe, Russia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, the Philippines, Central and South America and, yes, right here in North America.

Just like the United States, Europe has a substantial illegal immigration problem. Most illegal aliens are desperate people who are only seeking a better way of life. A few are criminals and, worse by far, Jihadists.

In Italy, Spain and France, many of the illegal aliens are Moroccans and Algerians.

Reports out of Algeria indicate that Al Qaeda is recruiting illegal aliens from areas in Spain, Italy and France.

This has plenty of relevance for America.

First of all, American diplomatic and economic targets in Europe will be likely targets for Al Qaeda. Second, we have a big illegal alien/border security policy of our own–and it’s not just about poor Mexicans taking jobs from Americans…

Every year, tens of thousands of OTMs–“Other Than Mexicans”–come across our borders. A lot come across from Canada, which is basically the forgotten piece of this entire puzzle. Of those tens of thousands of OTMs, thousands still are “special interest” OTMs.

A special interest OTM is an illegal alien from a nation of terrorism concern, such as state sponsors of terrorism and nations which are known to be breeding grounds for terrorists. A few examples are Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and several others.

This might be the biggest reason to get our arms around our border security problem, something which is unlikely to happen as long as Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are in charge in Washington…